Most of the population of Gulf Town seems to have departed for cooler climes, but Dustyfeet and I are still here. I’ve been rummaging around in various toddler activity blogs trying to find things to keep us occupied. This post from Filth Wizardry promised not one but two sessions of messy art in the kitchen, and a product that Dustyfeet could actually use at the end of it: a skirt that she painted all by herself.

We started with a piece of white fabric and a pile of cut string.

Then we added craft glue, and Dustyfeet mixed the glue and the string together.

We stuck bits of string all over the fabric. Dustyfeet thought the gluey string was a bit icky and wasn’t keen to handle it, so I had to do this, but we also dabbed on the glue with cotton wool balls and cotton buds, so that there were lots of glue splodges all over the fabric.

We left this to dry, and went and ran some races in the lobby to burn off some excess energy.

After Dustyfeet’s nap, the glue was dry and it was time to apply the paint. I mixed small quantities of acrylic paint with water. It has to be acrylic paint because Dustyfeet’s usual paints are all washable, and we needed something that would permanently stain the fabric. She wore an apron, but she managed to kneel in a puddle of paint on the floor, so the knees of her overalls have also been permanently dyed. Wear old clothes (or strip your child down to its nappy) if you try this at home!

We used sponges to apply paint all over the fabric. This was great fun, but it was VERY messy, especially when Dustyfeet decided to give up on the sponges and pour the paint onto the fabric.

Here’s the result of our work:

I now need to wash this to get out the glue and some of the excess paint (which makes the fabric rather stiff), and then I’ll make Dustyfeet a new skirt.